


The Killer and The Kid

by tisfan



Series: Imagine Tony and Bucky 2016/2017 [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dimension Travel, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Kid Fic, Kid Tony Stark, M/M, Magic, Not Steve Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, Protective Bucky Barnes, Sorry Not Sorry, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Hates Magic, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, everybody blames tony stark, re-aged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 05:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9108418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Imagine Tony getting deaged into a 5 or 6 year old, but instead of the team finding him, Bucky, still on the run and struggling with himself and the winter soldier, does. Bucky tries to take care of him, learning of all of Tony's issues and the abuse he went through. Eventually he has no choice but to come in and bring Tony to the avengers. After Tony comes back to himself they deal with the aftermathCA:CW compliant, happens after Bucky is put back in cryo.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Something had happened. The soldier wasn’t sure what. He vaguely remembered going to sleep, his last view before the white mist of oblivion covered his face was looking at the Mission, his Mission, alive, unhurt, smiling gently. 

 _I can’t trust my own mind._  

He woke, alone. 

The cryo tube was shattered, mist leaking into the air with its smell of dreams and faded memory. He never spoke of the dreams while in the tube, wretched and hot and vivid and going on and on, even when he knew he was dreaming, he couldn’t escape their clutches. 

There was a dead man on the floor that wasn’t the soldier. He tipped the man over; a scientist, or doctor, throat cut. He had the dark skin and natural hair of one of the African nations. The soldier grabbed the clipboard from him; he didn’t read Wakandan, but he could recognize some of the base words and lettering. Bad place to be. Wakandans were fierce fighters and didn’t appreciate strangers on their land. There was no way to blend in, either. 

Another dead man, this one shot in the back. The soldier inspected this one further, he wore tac gear. The soldier confiscated his gun, (checked the ammo, it was loaded, and there were two spare magazines in the bag) knives and food. No point in the gear, it had already been ruined. Boots were too large, but better than bare feet. The soldier shoved his feet into them and laced them tight. 

A faint noise, like someone taking a shaking breath, and the soldier whirled, gun pointed in the direction of… a kid. Four, maybe five years old, with dark curling hair and wide brown eyes and a pistol pointed directly at the soldier’s heart. He was wearing a man’s t-shirt, emblazoned with a metal band’s symbol on it, no pants, no shoes, the shirt fitting him like a smock. 

Gunfire rattled off a few rooms away, but the kid didn’t flinch, he didn’t move and he didn’t take the gun off the soldier. “Don’t move.” 

The soldier considered it. He was without armor, but one bullet wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t even slow him down. He felt no compulsion to attack. He didn’t put his gun down, but he didn’t make any threatening moves. 

“Tactical report?” the soldier requested. 

“Hydra invaded. Come to take you home,” the boy said. “You gonna let ‘em?” 

“Not the plan,” the soldier said. “Steve?” He didn’t know what a Steve was, the mission, maybe? The blonde man. It was important, but he was still too sleep fogged to sort it. 

“Protecting the others,” the boy said. “Not that freaky bitch queen can’t take care of herself.” 

The language, in the mouth of a child that small was a dissonance. The soldier shook his head, trying to clear it. 

“You gonna try to kill me again?” 

The soldier didn’t remember trying to kill this child to begin with, but that was hardly unusual. He had killed children before, he knew it, but didn’t know how that was a thing that he knew. He shook his head. He had no compulsion, no mission to direct him. No desire to shed blood unless it was for his own protection. “Not today.” 

“Then we should get you off the battlefield,” the tiny tactical genius said. “You aren’t clear enough to tell who’s friend and who’s not. Heaven forbid you try to rip someone else’s heart out. Eventually you’ll end up killing everyone who’s actually on your side, and then what will you do?” 

The soldier rather thought that this was a rhetorical speech and didn’t bother to answer. Had he ripped someone’s heart out? He couldn’t quite remember that, either. “Who are you?” 

“Not telling you that,” the boy said, not looking back. “Not now. Too dangerous.” 

“Who am I?” 

“Sergeant James Barnes,” the boy said. “The Winter Soldier. Now come on, before someone else comes looking for you.” 

* * *

 

“You, go that way, as far as you can run in a day, stay near the river. I’ll send Steve to get you after this shit is done. If Steve doesn’t come for you -- unlikely, but you never know, eventually that idiot is going to bite off more than he can chew up and spit out -- don’t show yourself to anyone who doesn’t call out the passcode ‘he’s fast and she’s weird.’ Got that much?” 

The soldier nodded. 

“I’ll try an’ send them in order of people you’ll recognize, but I think every last one of Hydra’s here, who’s left over, and that’s a good sized army. A few billion ants can take down even a tank.” 

The soldier was about to argue -- as much as he could with limited vocabulary and a very unspecific reason why he shouldn’t be separated from this boy -- when the decision was taken out of his hands. Hydra mech-soldiers, wearing armored combat suits and toting hand cannons, burst out of the hallway, and there was no more time for peaceful solutions or arguments. 

The soldier jerked the kid close to him. “Stay down,” he ordered, and the soldier went to war. It was fast and ugly. The kid did not stay down, and he did not stay uninvolved, using his pistol to advantage. The kid had incredible aim, good reflexes, and he was fearless. Between the two of them, the assault force of a dozen mechs were down in less than ten minutes. 

The soldier raided two sets of the armor for more weapons, a tactical vest, shoes that fit better. He crafted a makeshift pair of pants and thick, bound leg and footwraps for the kid. 

“What are you doing?” the kid asked, as if it wasn’t obvious, as if he didn’t already know. 

“Getting you out of here,” the soldier responded. “You’re coming with me.” 

“The _hell_ I am,” the kid stated. “You tried to kill me. You killed my parents. You and your fucking missions and the man who loves you anyway nearly destroyed the goddamn world. Now I am trying to be reasonable about this, but I don’t think you’re worth it. I think you’re a goddamn rabid dog and you need to be put down. But that’s not up to me, and I can’t ever get Cap back if you’re not helped. But I’m not your friend and I’m not going.” 

It took exactly three seconds to disarm the boy, and only because the soldier didn’t want to break his arm in the process. He wrapped the kid up in an oversized jacket and slung him over the soldier’s shoulder like an aggravated knapsack. The soldier picked out his path and ran. The kid didn’t scream; smart enough to know that he’d draw exactly the wrong sort of attention. The soldier disappeared into the jungle without looking back.

 

* * *

 

 

“Our form dictates our thinking,” the kid said, eventually. They were at least two days journey south of the Wakandan compound. The sounds of fighting had faded, but the smoke from the destruction was still in the sky, visible in the evenings. 

“What’s that mean?” the soldier asked. He’d had to keep his metal hand on the kid at all times, because every time the soldier relaxed, the kid had tried to bolt again. And he was very good with knots. _You have literally kidnapped me_ , the boy had said, eventually, with a great deal of venom. 

“It means that the longer I stay this way, the harder it’s going to be for me to remember that I’m not a child,” the boy said. The soldier didn’t know anything about that. Probably a delusion. Or a trick.

“Explain?” 

“Because apparently, your precious Steve is the only one allowed to tell lies,” the boy snarled, “Wanda was in the process of calling me a spoiled little brat when Hydra swarmed out of the hills and scared her. She was already swirling red freaksauce around and she directed it all at me. I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t try to pull another half dozen fucking cars on my head.” 

“What lie?” That sounded familiar. Freaky red swirls and cars. The soldier tried to push into the fog of his memory but the harder he struggled with it, the further that taste of memory receded until he couldn’t even remember what he thought he might have remembered.

The boy snorted and glared at him as if the soldier had completely missed the point. “That her brother’s not dead. Anymore. Helen reconstructed him in the same cradle that stole my JARVIS and gave Wanda her fucking boyfriend. I lied because he _was_ dead, he was going to die. If Helen couldn’t repair the cradle in time, if his wounds were too great, if the process didn’t work, she’d have just had to grieve for him all over again if anyone had given her that hope. It would have delayed the healing process for her, and she’s too fucking dangerous to be standing on the raggedy edge, waiting for a push.” 

“What did Steve --” 

“Everything. Okay, goddamnit, he lied about _everything_. He’s not Captain America, he’s Captain fucking Bucky Barnes, because whenever you show up, he forgets everything _except_ you. Keep _you_ safe, keep _you_ hidden, protect _you_ , no matter what the cost. No matter who else gets hurt. Fuck me, fuck the team, fuck the US government, fuck a hundred and seventeen different countries that think maybe dangerous people like him and me and you and Wanda ought not be let loose on the world without some _goddamn_ oversight.” The kid crossed both arms over his chest. 

“I am trying to own my mistakes, to make up for them. Even when they’re not mine, because _fixing_ the problem ought to take precedence over who _caused_ the problem. Well, congradu-fucking-lations, because you’ve done it again. You get fixed, I get to be the bad guy, and everyone still loves Captain America. I have a solution for your goddamn sieve of a brain; you’re going to get a full goddamn pardon, isn’t that just fucking peachy? Captain America’s back on the team, yippee-kai-aye, motherfucker. And I’m going to get stuck being a goddamn kid again because you’ve kidnapped my ass.” 

“You’re Tony Stark,” the soldier said, staring. 

“And you’re brilliant, yes, thank you,” Tony sniped. 

“All right, then. Come on.” He held out one arm to the kid. 

“Where are we going now?” 

“Back,” the Winter Soldier said. 

“Why?” 

“Because Wanda needs to fix this,” the Winter Soldier said, slowly. “Fix you.” 

“And then I need to fix you, okay, that’s fair, I suppose,” Tony said. 

Bucky shrugged one shoulder. “You first.” He shook his head, harder, trying to clear the fog, and it hurt, damn it, hurt to remember, he didn’t like remembering. Remembering attached everything to him, and his load was heavy, so goddamn heavy already. But how much blame was _Tony_ shouldering and no one was trying to take it off him? 

Bucky picked up the kid and balanced him on his hip. Tony hesitated a moment, then leaned his head against Bucky’s shoulder, warm and comforting. 

There were going to be consequences. All kinds of them. But fixing the problem took precedence over who caused the problem. And Bucky was going to fix this.


	2. The Witch and the Warrior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Killer and the Kid has been my most requested fic to have a sequel since I started working at Imagine Tony & Bucky blog, with over 40 readers saying that they want more.
> 
> I tossed it around in my mind (and thanks to reader Slvrbld for bouncing ideas with me) and came up with this. I still have more to say, so keep your eye out here for part three, eventually, The Captain and the Consequences)

T’challa, King of Wakanda, son of T’chaka, grandson of Azzuri, the Black Panther, protector of Wakanda, stood in the wreckage of his home and made arrangements for the care of the injured, the honor of the dead warriors, the incarceration of prisoners, and all those tasks that took place at the end of the battle. 

The foreigners, the Americans, the rogue _Avengers_ , were weary, blood splattered. Some of them were injured, but none particularly in danger. The silver-blonde boy that Stark had brought with him had a broken collarbone, painful, but not fatal. His sister, Wanda, hovered at his side, even now unable to look away from her brother’s face, unable to take her hand off his arm. 

“Sorry about this, your highness,” the Captain said, coming up beside T’challa, looking over the ruins of the audience hall and the subsequent destruction of the courtyards. 

“It was a risk I accepted,” T’challa said, his voice deep and thoughtful, “when I granted you sanctuary. That someone would come for you; Hydra, the United Nations. Eventually, you would be discovered.” 

“Stark?” 

T’challa rolled his eyes -- he was a trained diplomat, but sometimes people could be so… petty. “I deem it unlikely that Stark would lead such as these deliberately into my people’s lands. If he were looking to force you to return, to imprison you, I do not believe he would have arrived here, without his suit.” Beside which, Stark had known where the renegade Avengers were within ten days of their arrival; he’d been working closely (if secretively) with the Wakandan scientists to amplify and ready his Binarily Augmented Retro Framing device, that they might use it to deprogram Sergeant Barnes. He’d also consulted and provided schematics to replace the Winter Soldier’s metal arm that had been destroyed in Siberia. 

In short, Tony Stark was, as he always did, looking out for his teammates, whether they knew it or not, whether they appreciated it or not. 

T’challa stroked his chin. It was not his place to enlighten these Americans. Wisdom didn’t come from a place of lecture; it was either learned from experience, or it remained unearned. 

“<Sire>.” One of his men approached, bowed his head. He spoke in Xhosa, as had been the general order whenever there was information T’challa might not want to share with his guests. That was a ruse that probably wouldn’t last much longer. The Witch had a natural talent for languages. But she was not looking their way at the present. “<They are missing. There are many dead in that direction.>” He slanted a glance at Rogers. 

<”Did you find what happened to our friend?”> T’challa did not want to draw Rogers’ attention. 

<”He seems to have been with the soldier when they left the compound. Not willing.”> 

“Eish,” T’challa swore, and Rogers turned to look. That word, perhaps, T’challa used a little too often. 

“Something wrong?” 

“Your friend has woken early and is… not where we left him,” T’challa explained. There was no point in concealing it; Rogers would find out soon enough. “He may have taken the ensorcelled Stark with him.” 

“Took Tony? Why?” 

“You would, perhaps, know better than I.” 

* * *

 

Being dragged back to the Wakanda compound like a runaway toddler was pissing Tony off. The Winter Soldier -- who should not have woken up in that mindset and Tony was wondering in the half of his brain that wasn’t otherwise occupied by being pissed off, what had happened that his brainwashing had reset -- had Tony balanced on his hip, the metal arm wrapped around Tony’s waist. The position was only slightly less undignified than wrapped up like a burrito and hanging over the Winter Soldier’s shoulder. But only barely. 

Tony made that fucking arm; it shouldn’t be being put to use to contain him. 

“You know I’m perfectly capable of walking, right?” 

“You know your legs are at least a foot shorter than they used to be, right?” the Winter Soldier snapped back. “And you’ve already proven to be untrustworthy.” 

“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you, Manchurian Candidate,” Tony said, crossing his arms and leaning back as far as he could. He’d tried this maneuver a few times already, and chances were good he was going to end up falling on his head, but it was possible that the Winter Soldier would lose his grip. “In case you forgot, you tried to kill me once already.” 

The Winter Soldier’s steps faltered. “You said that before.” The Winter Soldier stopped his ground eating pace through the thick jungle, dropped Tony to the ground and steadied him, twisted himself into a graceful squat, which put him on eye level with the pint-sized Avenger. “I don’t… I don’t remember. Tell me what I did.” 

“You _lied_ ,” Tony said, eyes widening, less an accusation and more a revelation. “When I asked if you remembered killing my mom. You said you remembered them all, but you _lied_. Why would you lie about that? You don’t remember anything you do when you’re out of it, do you?”  

The Winter Soldier appeared to consider the question, his gray-blue eyes serious. Finally, he said, soft, “Did you need me to? I killed someone you loved.” He licked his lips, his expression shattering. “Would it have given you comfort?” 

Tony shrugged, his feelings a mess of shit and anger shoved in a blender. 

The Winter Soldier drew one of his weapons and offered to Tony. “Will revenge make it better?” 

Tony scoffed. “I’m not going to shoot you in cold blood,” he said, not taking the weapon. He squinted, then, “Holy shit. You _want_ someone to kill you.” 

The Winter Soldier shrugged. “I want someone to stop me. I know what I _am_ , even if I don’t know what I’ve _done_.”  

“Jesus,” Tony said. “Well, it’s not going to be me. I don’t take out Hydra’s trash for them.” 

The Winter Soldier holstered the gun. “Are we done, then?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just extended the metal hand to Tony and stood up. Warily, as if expecting the fingers to clamp down, or to drag him back up to the Winter Soldier’s side, Tony took the metal fingers. The Winter Soldier clasped his hand lightly, like a parent with a kid crossing the street. At a much more moderate pace, keeping Tony’s short legs in mind, the Winter Soldier continued back toward the compound. 

* * *

  
Tony scowled at the fire, low burning and smokeless, that the Winter Soldier had set up. He was probably going to have to give up and let himself be carried the rest of the way back. They’d made shitty progress that day, and the compound was still another eight hours walk away. At least. 

Watching the Winter Soldier tickle fish out of the river had been interesting, at least. He stepped into the water, slow and easy, not even causing a ripple, then put his metal hand down. Time passed and the Winter Soldier hardly moved, breathing slow and shallow, then suddenly in a flurry of motion, he lunged, snapped up and tossed a wriggling catfish onto the shore. 

“Get it, get it,” the Winter Soldier said, and Tony rushed forward to struggle with a huge, black fish that was almost half as long as he was, dragging it back into the wood. The Winter Soldier had gutted the fish, wrapped it in leaves, and spitted the whole thing over the fire. After making Tony promise to stay there -- and actually trusting him to do so -- the Winter Soldier disappeared into the jungle and returned with his shirt over his shoulder, stuffed full of a red fruit that was about the size of a lemon and tasted like a cross between a grape and and a cranberry. 

They ate piping hot, flaky fish off leaves and Tony found himself leaning against the Winter Soldier as it got darker, aware of his tiny stature and propensity for looking like tiger food. In the curve between the Winter Soldier’s metal arm and his ribs, Tony found a warm, safe nest, and didn’t even mind as the Winter Soldier spread the shirt he’d used as a basket, over Tony’s form. “Sleep, kid,” he said, low and soft, “I’ll keep ya safe.” 

“Not a kid,” Tony muttered, but snuggled against the Winter Soldier’s side and let his eyes drift shut. 

* * *

  
Steve had seen some strange shit, even before he woke up from being in the deep-freeze for seventy years. But Bucky walking into the Wakanda compound hand in hand with a four-year-old Tony Stark just about took the cake. 

And then, even more astounding, was the fact that the Wakandan guard descended, guns at the ready, and rather than Bucky going into defense mode -- Steve had watched that several times, Bucky’s response had always been violence, or fleeing -- he’d just stood there. Tony, on the other hand, had snatched up one of the pistols and pointed it directly at the captain’s head. “Don’t you fucking touch him,” he snapped, weirdly adorable and angry at the same time. 

“No one will come to harm, Mr. Stark,” T’challa said, moving into the courtyard with haste. He snapped a few words in that clicking language that the Wakandans spoke. 

Bucky gave T’challa a quick bow, answering in the same tongue, his mouth moving quickly through an explanation that Steve couldn’t understand at all. 

“I did not know you spoke our tongue,” T’challa said, chagrined. 

“I didn’t know it, either,” Bucky said. “Where’s the witch?” 

Wanda came out, floating on a cloud of her red-mist magic. “What do you want?” 

“Fix it,” Bucky said, indicating Tony with a jerk of his chin. 

“Why should I?” Wanda stared down at the little boy, her eyes crackling with red fire. “Maybe, this time, he will grow up to be less terrible. He will have time, to think of the choices he has made. Time, like I had, in that prison.” 

“Were your choices better?” Bucky asked, calm, quiet. His voice was deadly, his face unforgiving. “Made the right ones, all the time, did you? And when you didn’t, did you make up for your mistakes? Help heal the harm you’d caused?” 

Wanda shivered, the red mist dying under her feet and she lowered heavily to the ground. “No,” she answered. 

“Then make better ones,” Bucky urged. “Fix this. You’re the only one who can.” 

“I… um,” Wanda started, licking at her lips. She stared around helplessly. Her brother, his arm in a sling, came up behind her, touched her shoulder. 

“She can’t,” Pietro said. 

“Why not?” 

Wanda blinked a few times. “I… I don’t know how. I don’t know what I did the first time. I don’t know how to undo it.” 

Tony sighed, throwing his hands up in the air, the disgust and despair weighing oddly on his tiny frame. “Figures.” 

Bucky heaved a sigh, then dropped to one knee at Tony’s side. “We’ll figure it out, then,” he said, drawing the boy into a hug. Steve’s jaw dropped as Tony threw his arms around Bucky’s chest, seeking comfort from one of the people who should have been his greatest enemy. Bucky put his arms around the boy and stared at Steve. 

“Bucky,” Steve said, walking up. Bucky scooped the boy up and half-turned, hand coming up defensively as if Steve was a threat. “What are you doing?” 

“Making better choices,” Bucky said, keeping himself between Steve and the boy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eish is an African word, with a kind of “sheesh” connotations, a very mild exclamation. 
> 
> Xhosa, the language suggested by the directors for the Wakandans, is an African language, commonly referred to as the “click language.” In _Captain America: Civil War_ , the actor who played T’chaka, (John Rani) spoke it and taught it to Chadwick Boseman during the filming.
> 
> Update: This author was corrected about the nature of the word "eish" by reader Thando. My apologies, I was using the internet for research after reading about John Rani teaching the language to Boseman in some behind the scenes stuff. My sources were apparently inaccurate.


	3. The Captain and the Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's this...
> 
> Finally.
> 
> My beta reader has said regarding this chapter: "OW, this is exquisitely painful." So, you're warned. Takes place (ish) about 2 weeks after Witch and Warrior.

“I’m not hungry,” Tony said. His tiny feet were sticking out from underneath the sun cannon. King T’challa had given Tony permission to recover in Wakanda; or at least, hide there until they could figure out what they were going to do. And Princess Shuri had given up and given him access to one of the less vital workshops, just to keep him out of her hair.

So, he’d taken apart one of the malfunctioning defense cannons and was trying to figure out how it worked so that he could then figure out how to fix it.

“You know what the nice thing is ‘bout you bein’ knee high to a grasshopper?”

“If you grab my ankle and try to drag me out, Buckaroo, I will dismantle that arm of yours while you’re sleeping. You sleep like a dead man, so don’t even think I can’t,” Tony retorted. “You’re not my babysitter. Go away.”

Bucky didn’t go away. He dropped to the floor and put his back up against the cannon. “You need to eat,” he said, reasonably. “You’re a growing boy.”

“I was a fucking grown up three weeks ago,” Tony snarled. “I did all this before, didn’t like it the first time, not happy about it now.”

Bucky let his eyes drift closed. For as much as he’d spent so much time sleeping, he was still tired. All the time. Steve was blaming it on Bucky’s self-appointed Tony guardianship.

“Honest, Buck, the guy was exhausting when he could take care of himself,” Steve had said, throwing his hands up. “Doesn’t matter what he looks like, you aren’t responsible for him.”

“Not like someone else’s steppin’ up,” Bucky had responded, and gone back to his self-appointed duties as genius wrangler.

“What are you doing, thought I told you to beat it,” Tony said, hand groping around on the floor next to him. Bucky nudged the tool into place without so much as opening his eyes.

“If you ain’t eatin’, I ain’t eatin’,” Bucky said. It was fine. He wasn’t even really hungry yet. Just tired. And despite everything, spending time with Tony was… less frustrating than everyone else. As far as he could tell, everyone was angry, and Tony was the only one who was still functioning, despite being both angry and forty-two inches tall.

Tony actually pushed all the way out from under the cannon to grant Bucky the full privilege of his doubtful look. “The hell, Barnes?”

“Stop,” Bucky said, letting his eyes drift closed again. “You’re about to say all th’ same bullshit stuff that Steve just went over with me, ‘bout how I ain’t responsible for you, an’ you’re an adult in a kid’s body and don’t need any help, or nothin’, right?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Tony grumbled. “I’d rather not rank up with the good Captain these days. I’m sure you understand.”

“So, come have some lunch with me,” Bucky suggested.

Tony waggled a tool in his direction. “You’re not winning that easily, Barnes.”

Fine. Bucky hauled himself to his feet. “Yes, I am.” He grabbed Tony around the middle and threw the kid over his shoulder. “ _Don’t_ stab me with that thing,” he told Tony.

“I wasn’t going to,” Tony protested.

“Yes, you were. An’ I’m tellin’ you, I’d rather not deal with it. Not t’ mention what’ll happen if someone ‘round here gets it into their head that you’re a dangerous child. You know they could jus’ lock you in your room.”

“I know Wanda wants to,” Tony huffed. “Look, if you’re going to carry me around like I’m your pet cat or something, can I at least sit right way up? This is nauseating.”

“Thought you were s’posed to go back to bein’ about four, mentally,” Bucky said, but shifted Tony around until he was resting on Bucky’s hip.

“Honestly, aside from a taste for scotch and a stupidly high sex drive, I really wasn’t all that different,” Tony said. “Howard didn’t… he didn’t allow me to be a kid, so… guess I never really was.”

“Maybe you could get a better childhood, this time ‘round?”

“I’d rather not be a kid at all,” Tony pointed out. “Being an adult’s got so much more going for it. Although, honestly, no one takes me any more seriously when I’m five eight, so, there’s that, I guess.”

Bucky hauled Tony into the kitchen and sat him down on the counter, trying not to think about how weird and nice it was, to just have someone to look after. He couldn’t analyze it; not enough data points, but it felt… good, somehow. Soothing. He knew how to take care of someone; even a stubborn, belligerent someone.

“What’s your plan, then?” Bucky asked. He checked the hotpot in the oven; there was usually something in there that was vaguely food-like. The crockery cooking item stayed in the heating unit, keeping food warm. He opened the lid; chicken, peanuts, coconut sauce. “Mmm. Piri piri. You’ll like this.” Tony was not, actually, a picky eater, which was good, because Wakanda cuisine was nothing like mac&cheese or cheeseburgers that could be acquired in the States. He basically ate whatever someone put in front of him, eating for fuel, not fun.

Bucky knew the feeling; he was the same way. The Winter Soldier ate what he was given, or sometimes, on extended missions, what he could steal, and taste had nothing to do with it. But getting Tony to actually _sit_ , and _eat_ , and _enjoy_ a meal. That was both difficult and rewarding.

“Well, first I’m going to figure out how to calibrate the conductive thermal chargers on that cannon -- see if you can’t sweet talk Shuri into letting me get a look at the schematics, would ya? There’s no point in reinventing the fucking wheel, even if what she’s doing is humoring me.”

“First off, you can’t read Wakandan, so I don’t know what good that’ll do you,” Bucky said, “and secondly, they have people to fix those things, so you don’t have to do it, and third. I meant… about this?” He waved one hand absently at Tony’s tiny frame. “Don’t tell me you don’t got a plan, genius.”

“I have a plan,” Tony said, snitching a piece of chicken off Bucky’s plate. “I have several plans, all of which involve getting the fuck out of Wakanda, and I’m not quite ready for that, yet, so fixing the sun cannon keeps my hands occupied and my five-year-old ass out of trouble, in the meanwhile.”

“Tell me th’ plan,” Bucky said.

“So, what, you can stop me? No thanks, Red October.”

Bucky added a scoop of matapa -- a leafy green cooked in sauce -- to Tony’s plate. “No, but if your plan involves flying a quijet out of here, you’re gonna need someone tall enough to reach the controls.”

Tony hummed at that, stuffing more of the chicken in his mouth and licking his fingers noisily. “I think we all know by now that Witch Bitch isn’t going to help me,” he said. “Even if she can figure out what she did to wind me up in this position in the first place, she doesn’t care enough to undo it, and I don’t think there’s any way to make her without putting me at more risk. Besides, I don’t trust her not to overdo it in the wrong direction. Being a kindergartener's no fun, but it’s at least fixable over time, whereas being a nonagenarian’s a short term problem with only one solution. Well, for me, at any rate. Don’t have some of your advantages.”

“You think she’d age you out of existence?”

“You think she wouldn’t?” Tony didn’t look like he wanted reassurances; he’d already done the math and decided that the witch’s abilities were a poor gamble.

“Why?”

“We tend to treat the people we’ve hurt pretty badly… if I’m a terrible person, than I deserve all this,” Tony said, waving his plate around. “And she doesn’t have to deal with any guilt. Not that I’m saying she’s wrong, God knows my hands aren’t the least bit clean. But I have work to do and it won’t get done if I’m dead. What other people think of me does not matter, in the long run. So, I can’t let it stop me.”

“Assuming I agree, what then?”

“There’s a guy, in New York, even, who might be able to help,” Tony said. “If I can get him to talk to me. If I can convince him that it’s important. He has certain… sticklier sort of rules about magic and what it’s used for and greater good responsibilities that he might not necessarily think apply to me. I’m usually pretty charming, or at least, I talk fast enough to convince people to take me seriously, but as a child? I’m not sure I can even get in the door.”

“I can get in the door,” Bucky said, confident.

“You know, pretty sure that if Strange wanted to, he can put your ass, gorgeous as it is, on another planet, so don’t piss him off. I might need you, later.”

It was, Bucky had to admit, a little disconcerting for a five-year-old to be flirting with him.

“And if this… Strange, can’t help you?” Because it was Tony, and Tony would always have a back up plan. And a back up backup plan. And probably four or five contingencies if that didn’t work. Steve had accused Tony of being a hot-head with poor impulse control, but Bucky didn’t think that was true at all. He thought, instead, that Tony was so far ahead, like a chess grandmaster on steroids, that he just didn’t wait for anyone to catch up.

“Well, then I do the really boring, hard shit,” Tony said.

“What’s that?”

“I become Edward Nathan Stark, and I grow up again, and I hope to God we have enough time before everything comes crashing down around us,” Tony said. “Might have to build myself an Iron Lad suit or something.”

“You jus’ don’t quit, do ya?”

“Quit’s not in my vocabulary, Hot Pocket,” Tony said. He licked his thumb, catching the last of the piri piri sauce and hopped down from the countertop. “So, you gonna fly me out of here, or report me to your pal, your buddy?”

“I’m not gonna report you to Steve,” Bucky said, heaving a great sigh. “Steve got himself and his friends into this shit when a little goddamn investigating on anybody’s part would have solved all this shit in th’ first place. He can damn well dig himself out of it.”

“I’m part of anybody, who could have investigated,” Tony said, thoughtfully.

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why are you helping me? And don’t say shit about owing me for Howard. I’m trying to get past that shit, and you turning into a Catholic boy with guilt complexes the size of my… arm… isn't’ going to help that.”

“Okay, seriously, stop with the dirty talk,” Bucky said. “It doesn’t suit you.”

“If you don’t answer the question, I’ll give you a really detailed description of my last blowjob.” Tony crossed his arms over his chest and looked ridiculously cute. It was… very disturbing.

“Givin’ or recievin’?” Bucky asked, because he could play this game too, and probably better than Tony. He didn’t have any goddamn shame left at all.

Tony rolled his tongue around in his mouth and gave Bucky a lascivious look that was _really_ out of place on a five year old kid. “Get me off this continent and maybe I’ll tell you about it,” Tony said.

“I was doin’ that anyway,” Bucky huffed. “Don’t need t’ know who spit-shines your helmet, Iron Man.”

“I don’t like things I don’t understand. And I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Tony confessed, but it didn’t keep him from doing that little hop-skip-run thing that let him keep up with Bucky. No time like the present to leave; they were only going to get one chance at this, and all the planning in the world wasn’t going to make it any easier. Might as well just go, and hope they got lucky.

Of course, when had that ever worked out?

For either of them.

***

 

Barnes had a hell of a poker face.

Steve. Didn’t.

Tony glanced back and forth between the two of them and considered bolting for the quinjet and making his way to New York on his own. Didn’t.

Mostly because Barnes was right and there was exactly zero probability of Tony being able to fly the fucking thing in his disadvantaged state.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Barnes demanded. Far be it from Tony to interfere in that, but he figured--

“Wanda told me you two might make a break for it.” Yeah, that. Because Steve was taking orders from Wanda now. Tony didn’t know if Steve was compromised, or if he was just listening to anyone in a mad need for things to make sense.

Tony could have told him a long time ago that if he waited around for the universe to make sense, he was going to spend all of his time worried and angry.

Not that Steve didn’t know that. It wasn’t helping.

“We shouldn’t have to, should we, pal? Make a break for it. I’m not a prisoner. Tony shouldn’t be one. Isn’t that what all of you wanted? Not to be held somewhere against your will?”

“You’re not a prisoner, Buck,” Steve protested. Tony noticed that Steve didn’t say one way or the other about one Tony Stark, but that was okay. Tony knew the score. People always seemed to forget that Tony Stark was really good at math.

“Then I can go.”

“It’s not safe. This isn’t… it’s not prison, Bucky. It’s protective.”

“Seems like I said that about Sabrina the teenage witch,” Tony commented. God, he hated how squeaky and pathetic his voice came out, sounding like a toddler with a tantrum, which, based on how Steve didn’t even look at him, was probably about the size of it.

Barnes, on the other hand, flicked a gaze at him. Trying to tell him something with a flash of his blue eyes. Tony didn’t bother trying to interpret. The gig was up, as the phrase went. There was no way in hell Barnes was going to directly rebel against Captain Perfection, and there was no way Steve was letting them leave.

Tony was just going to have to wait it out. His moment would come. Eventually. Or he’d grow up. Or Shuri would relax enough to let Tony figure out how to get his hands on a communicator. Wakanda could burn the world down, if they wanted to badly enough, but Tony didn’t think they would. He was pretty sure if there were some people looking hard enough for Tony Stark and the Winter Soldier, that T’challa would give all their ungrateful asses up. To save the world, which Tony had to hand it to the man, was at least a more noble reason than anyone else would have.

Although, apparently what Barnes had been trying to say was get out of the goddamn way, idiot, because he punched Steve with every bit of force in that metal arm, sliding Steve back about twenty feet and nearly stumbling over a slack-mouthed Tony.

“Go, go, go,” Barnes told him.

The hell?

“Bucky, don’t… don’t do this again, pal,” Steve was practically begging, flashing those huge, puppy eyes at his friend, his buddy. His Bucky.

“This isn’t _again_ , Steve,” Barnes said. “I’m in my right mind. We’re leaving. If I have to go through you to do it.”

“Why… why are you doing this? For Stark?”

Oh, now that wasn’t fair. Tony’d been asking the same question and he wasn’t getting an answer, and here Steve was and Barnes was just going to spill everything? How was that even remotely fair?

Barnes scoffed. “I’m doin’ it because _you should be_ ,” he said, fierce, fervent. “Because that stupid kid from Brooklyn who never backed down from a fight fuckin’ surrendered, Stevie. What the _hell_ happened to you?”

“You did,” Tony said. Because that was the truth. Everything else was just bullshit. SHIELD, Hydra, fucking Brock Rumlow. The UN’s decree, which even Steve should have known was more PR than it was worth; when had a hundred and seventeen countries agreed on anything? The accords was a one time piece of world-drama, and some oversight. Steve should have been able to accept that. At one time, he’d wanted to save the world. “You happened.”

That shouldn’t have hurt so much, but it did. Not that it mattered. Tony didn’t have time for feelings, either about Steve who he’d worshiped since childhood and found out that his gods had feet of clay after all. Or Barnes, who’d taken the time to listen and get to know him and take care of him. What mattered was that they had each other, and Tony was never going to get close to either of them.

“Buck.”

“No, Steve,” Barnes said. “You don’t have any reason to keep Tony here except pettiness, and protecting Wanda from scrutiny. And I _don’t belong to you._ I stayed by your side, at your back, because I wanted to. But you’re not worthy of it. You put the whole world at risk, Steve. And you’re not listening. If that’s on me, if that’s my fault, I’ll find some way to make amends. But right now, I’m taking Tony, and we’re going to get him some help. Maybe… someday. We can try this being friends thing again. If you get out of my way. Now.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Tony said, and he probably was still thinking he was an adult and that people would take him seriously, when he knew they wouldn’t. (Even when he was an adult, when the hell had Steve ever taken him seriously?) “Nope. No, this is not happening. I’m not going to be the reason the dynamic duo breaks up. Come on, guys, guys… let’s just…”

Steve didn’t even look. He stared at Barnes as if his heart was breaking.

And then took a step back.

“Go,” he said. “Go on.”

“Steve--”

“Tony, go. Just… keep him safe.”

Tony opened his mouth to protest; what the entire fuck was he supposed to do to protect _Barnes_? The guy was a one-man army with an ass like a supermodel. Barnes didn’t hesitate. He shouldered Steve out of the way, grabbed Tony up like a sack of potatoes (Tony really needed to have words with Barnes about that, it was undignified.) and they were on the Quinjet in moments.

“Where are we going?”

“Sanctum Sanctorum, in New York City,” Tony said.

“Strap in.”

Tony did as he was told, wordless for a change. He didn’t understand any of this, except that it _hurt_.

Steve watched from the hangar deck during the entire preflight check.

Barnes… didn’t look back.

Something irrevocable had broken between them.

Tony… was pretty sure it was his fault, but he didn’t know how to fix it.

Barnes didn’t want it to be fixed.

“Clear us a path, Tower,” Barnes said into the headset, “or be prepared to shoot us down. We’re leaving.”

“Safe flight, my friends,” King T’challa’s voice was clear and calm.

“Good landing,” Barnes replied.

“Look after Cap for me, would you,” Tony said, because he couldn’t just… leave Steve there while his world crumbled around him. It didn’t matter what Steve had done. It wasn’t in Tony to not try to fix things.

“I will see that he gets the care that he needs.”

“Thank you for that,” Barnes added.

The Quinjet rose, hovered a moment, and then they were away.

Steve didn’t stop looking, the entire time. Tony knew, because he couldn’t stop looking back. 


	4. The Magic and the Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I happened to be in a mood yesterday, and this happened. So, this changes the fic from being a friendship/protector thing into being lovers, eventually, after Tony grows up some. There's a little bit of kissing near the end, but it's mostly about Tony and Bucky being supportive of each other with a dash of the sads.

“What do you mean, can’t?”

Tony was standing on the chair, because having Stephen Strange look down on him (even if he was only looking down at) wasn’t doing Tony’s ego any good, and he’d had a lot of ego problems recently. Enough to last two lifetimes. Bad enough he was reduced to asking Strange for help. He’d had just about enough of people named Steve, too.

Strange settled back into one of his plush chairs, having examined Tony thoroughly. While standing, shivering, in a circle of runes dressed in something that resembled a mix between a hospital paper gown and something an extra in a stage performance of _Oliver Twist_ might own.

“What the young witch did,” Strange said, templing his fingers together in front of his chest and leaning his chin delicately on the apex of his index fingers, “is both ingenius and irreversible by normal, and even some abnormal, means. I’m afraid in this particular circumstance, there is no magic spell to _reverse_. You have absolutely no magical trace clinging to you. If I passed you on the street, I would never know that you’d been so affected.”

“Try it again in English for the thaumaturgically impaired, doc?” Barnes suggested.

“There’s nothing to get a hold of. She didn’t cast a sort of sustaining spell, like a curse or anything. You hear about them all the time in old stories and they have some basis in fact, that when a certain criteria is met, the spell will break?”

Strange waited until both Barnes and Tony were nodding. Of course Tony knew about curses, did Strange think he’d never seen a movie or read a fantasy novel?

“There’s nothing to get hold of,” Strange said. “This isn’t something she’s _doing_ to you, it’s something she’s _done_. In other words, you can’t unbake a cookie.”

Tony sighed and let himself fall into the chair, not failing to notice that Strange looked relieved that his shoes were no longer on the upholstery. Probably. Or Tony was reading too much into everything. He continually felt like a kid these days. Certainly no one was taking him seriously. He was going to have to totally expand his ability to remote pilot, because no one was going to let him take an… he didn’t even know, an Iron Boy suit into combat.

“I did not say I couldn’t help you,” Strange offered.

“You coulda lead with that,” Tony said, but he was already sitting up straighter and paying more attention. “Go on.”

Strange fingered the green eye amulet he wore around his neck. “What she did was permanent; she didn’t grab an alternate you out of the timeline, or something -- otherwise you wouldn’t have your memories intact. She literally changed you. From being middle-aged to being a child.”

Tony grumbled a little at being called middle-aged, but he supposed he was… if you considered middle-aged to be the middle of one’s life. At least Wanda hadn’t cost him his AARP discount or anything.

“So?”

“So, all of us are time travellers,” Strange continued, his voice taking on that slow, pedantic cadence that reminded Tony of intermediate school teachers, and he was somewhat disgusted (again) that Strange was, actually, a genius, and therefore, the talking-down-to-you voice was probably to be expected. Tony make a mental note to get with a vocal coach, though, and make sure no traces of that condescension hung out in his own explaining-things-to-idiots tone. “We travel forward through time at a speed of one second per second. Which is how you’re going to have to grow up again.”

“Great, puberty,” Tony groused.

“I can at least make it comfortable for you,” Strange said. “And, to some degree, accelerated outside the normal time stream for this particular dimension.”

“Louder, for those of us in the back,” Barnes muttered.

“I can shift Stark into a timestream that passes faster than ours,” Strange said. “Or, slightly slower than a thousand days pass there, when twenty-four hours pass here. A period of two weeks here, and Stark would be able to return to his life, without too many people realizing he was gone at all.”   

“Is it dangerous?” Probably a good thing Barnes asked that, because Tony was never one to be particularly concerned with his own safety.

“Sounds boring,” Tony retorted, not waiting to see what Strange had to say.

“To some degree, Stark is right,” Strange said, although he addressed that to Barnes, like Barnes’ opinion had any weight in the matter. Not that Tony didn’t appreciate Barnes turning traitor on Steve (see how you like it, Rogers!) but the intent, razor-focus that Barnes sometimes turned on Tony was… unnerving to say the least. He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up with a six-foot deadly shadow. And he really wasn’t sure what to do with it, now. “It will be boring. He’s going to have to grow up, and grow old, again.”

“Alone,” Tony mentioned, because even he’d seen that particular variable in the equation. “What the hell am I supposed to do for forty years? Alone in a room?” Also, how was he supposed to eat and go to the bathroom and… yeah. Logistics and magic didn’t go together particularly well.

“There are magical energies that can coalesce well enough to provide for your needs; food, water, clothing, elimination. A servant, consider him, formed of magical substance, that can transfer those items from one dimension to the other without a significant time lapse. As for the other, I have a dreamwalking spell that might give you something to cling to. If I locked anyone in a room for forty years, I would not open the door to sanity. Much less, Tony Stark, who could probably not handle the boredom for forty hours.”

Barnes, damn him, laughed.

It was annoying, in that Tony didn’t particularly want to be laughed at, and annoying in the secondary fact that Tony wanted, for some reason, to make him do it again. He hadn’t heard that particular laugh before, full of joy and humor.

Not that Tony was surprised by that -- what had Barnes had to laugh about for the last seventy years or so? Given the alternatives, Tony might be willing to admit forty years of boredom was probably better than seventy years worth of torture and brainwashing. He swallowed around a lump in his throat; feeling sorry for Barnes wasn’t a thing Tony was used to, even yet. Deal with him, sure. Work with him? Easy. Tony’d been working with people he wanted to kill, or could kill him, since he graduated from college.

Like him?

That was both an entirely different story and completely irrelevant.  

“That’s where the dream walking spell would come in,” Strange said. “Think of it as an alternate reality, if you wish it. The world will conform mostly to your expectations, populated by those you remember. They’ll give you friends and caretakers to interact with.”

“Great,” Tony said, not meaning it at all. “I can have another decade or so with Howard. Just what I want.”

“I did say _mostly_ ,” Strange reminded him. “With some effort, you can, essentially, fit the shadows of memory to do better.”

“That’s gonna still be great, figuring it out while Howard breaks my arm again,” Tony muttered. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to pain, but it had seemed so big when he was a child, terror and pain and--

“I’m afraid you will still have to suffer pain,” Strange said, giving Tony a shrug that could have meant anything. “Otherwise you might grow too bold. Without pain’s reminder, your body will forget it shouldn’t do things like--”

“Fly a metal suit of armor?”

“But you won’t die,” Strange said. “Nothing in there will actually physically harm you.”

Tony didn’t protest that time, but he could see all sorts of ways that it would go wrong. Torture that never ended, for instance. He glanced at Barnes, but there was nothing there that Tony could make use of.

 “Give me a day or so to get everything lined up for a two-week vacation reliving all my best memories,” Tony said, sarcasm dripping off each word, “and I’ll be good to go.”

***

Tony was twelve, the first time Bucky Barnes showed up in his memories, completely out of context.

He arrived as a hired driver for Tony’s parents, complete with metal arm and Brooklyn accent. It wasn’t entirely beyond the realm of possibilities, Tony decided, that his messing around with memories had weird ripple effects.

It had taken Tony exactly one session of being told why he wasn’t living up to Howard’s expectations, along with unfavorable comparisons to Steve Rogers (there was a trip down memory lane that Tony was just about done with) to hack into his father’s computer (Apple II, and what even the fuck were computers these days?) and drop the locations for the Valkyrie.

Steve Rogers had been brought back from the ice in 1978 and Howard had better things to do than denigrate his son. Peggy Carter had been in her mid-fifties, but was still active in SHIELD, even if she’d retired from the field. Rogers was still Rogers, hostile, angry, and resenting being in the future, but he wasn’t a dick enough to take it out on Tony, and that was all Tony really cared about.

With SHIELD firmly under control of Rogers, Stark, and Carter, Tony could guess that Hydra might have a harder time gaining a foothold.

Which didn’t necessarily mean that Barnes was safe. In fact, Howard might have gotten on Hydra’s radar faster, having access to Rogers.

Which meant Tony was going to have to do something about it, and as he’d been down in his workshop -- Howard pretty much gave Tony unlimited funds, so long as Tony stayed out from underfoot, and Tony was taking advantage of it to get a lot of engineering done when no one had to bother him for company business or saving the world -- he was resenting the interruption.

He’d built himself a suit, kept it hidden from everyone, and might have been responsible for a whole slew of UFO sightings over central New York. He decided the easiest way to deal with the possible Winter Soldier problem was to just grab the guy in the suit, fly him off somewhere, and shoot him. It wouldn’t matter -- with the changes Tony was making in the false-world timeline, the appearance of the Winter Soldier only mattered to people whose lives had already been changed.[]

It wasn’t hard to find Barnes; being the so-called driver and all, Tony got his Iron Lad suit on and ambushed Barnes in the garage. Howard was probably going to get on Tony’s case at least a little, because Barnes was not particularly easy to sneak up on, and they sort of squashed the Bugatti in the tussle before Tony got hold of Barnes’ belt and yanked him away from the house.

What he wasn’t expecting was Barnes to be both armed and ruthless.

Barnes grabbed his own belt buckle and tore it open, letting himself fall at least fifty feet into a small grove of birch trees.

And then he shot Tony out of the sky.

Which Tony probably should have been expecting, because Strange had warned him that the people in this world would conform to his expectations, until he had time to practice getting them to react differently, and Barnes had been at the center of all of Tony’s bad life choices when he was back at the real world.

But Tony had sort of forgotten about the real world. Not… entirely. But it was faded and unimportant here. With Tony’s eidetic memory, he never forgot a thing, but he used his memories from the real world more like a false world wikipedia.  (Which was how he’d managed to get his father to interrupt Obadiah’s marital relations enough, through subtle suggestions, that Obie’s wife hadn’t died in childbirth, delivering their only son, and instead had later presented Obie with three daughters, one right after the other. Tony was keeping track; thus far, Obie was a lot less greedy and hadn’t yet been approached by Ten Rings. Tony was trying to keep it that way. He still had memories of Obie that he wanted to savour and relive. Killing the man as a pre-teen wasn’t going to be fun.)

Falling wasn’t fun, either.

Landing… even less so. Tony bounced down a particularly large elm tree, hitting, it seemed, every damn branch on the way down. He landed heavily in the dirt, all the wind knocked out of him.

Barnes was already there. “Hi, Tony,” he said. “Hell of a greetin’.”

Tony gasped and gagged, trying desperately to drag air into a chest that wasn’t working. Why, why, why couldn’t Strange have made a world where there wasn’t any pain?

“... ow.”

Barnes sighed and holstered his weapon. “Come on, you’re okay,” Barnes said. He pushed Tony into a sitting position, hand gentle around the throat of the Iron Lad suit. “Where’s the manual?”

“Why would I tell _you_ that?”

“Because you like breathing, and I don’t want to rip into it with my bare hands,” Barnes said, although there was a slight tip to his mouth that suggested it wouldn’t be that difficult for him.

“How do you even know my name?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t know it? Strange’s little fun-house is weird enough, but it didn’t cost me m’ wits.”

Tony hadn’t run into that before, that knowledge that they were part of an alternate reality. The people in Tony’s world acted like people, with independant wants and wishes. Tony’d been able to nudge those. He had more knowledge than would be expected, had been able to give his parents what they needed, both from him as a child, and from their own lives.

But Barnes had been there, when the whole spell went down, and Tony didn’t really have a lot of memories of the man, and they’d, honestly, mostly been bad. So, it maybe wasn’t so surprising that Barnes came into this new life with more knowledge than the rest of Tony’s pretend companions.

Tony gave him a suspicious glare. “What are you doing here?”

Barnes stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “Been watchin’ you for a while,” he said. “Let m’self fall into SHIELD’s hands, an’ they were key t’ gettin’ me away from Hydra. Th’ brainwashing techniques improved a lot over the last twenty years, so takin’ 1975 Winter Soldier turned out to be cake, compared t’ what you an’ Steve went through t’ get me back.”

“So you have all your old memories, and this new set?” Tony raised an eyebrow. It probably didn’t look nearly intimidating enough on his twelve-year-old face as it did on what he still thought of as _his_ face. (Looking in the mirror was still disconcerting, and Tony was desperately waiting until he got to be sixteen or so and could start thinking about growing out his beard. Even if it did look like a complete joke for the first three years. And by that time, he’d have _Rhodey_.)

Barnes just looked at him.

_Oh_. Tony guessed that might have been a bit insensitive, even if he was talking to a pretend anomaly person. “Right, nevermind. What’s the plan, snowflake?”

“Th’ plan is t’ live my life,” Barnes said, his face soft and weirdly vulnerable and Tony didn’t know how to feel about that, so he just shoved it off. He could still compartmentalize with the best of them. “I never had one, you know. Seventy years as something that was alive, but not quite real? I just… want to do a job. Have a home. Maybe find someone to care about.”

“All right, but why here? Why let yourself fall into SHIELD’s hands? Why take a job working for my father, for fuck’s sake, because you’re the one who’s supposed to kill him.”

Barnes gave Tony a tight-lipped smile. “You’ll be watchin’, I expect,” he said. “You’ve already changed a lot.”

“Well, forewarned is forearmed and all that,” Tony told him. “Just, you know, stay out of my way, and don’t get all murderous. We’ll be fine.”

***

For someone who was supposed to stay out of Tony’s way, as the years passed, Tony saw more and more of Barnes.

Who unexpectedly became Bucky when he saved Rhodey’s life.

Tony had not remembered the experiment going that badly, the first time around. Or maybe it was a side effect of Strange’s little homegrown fantasy land.

“I distinctly remember an explosion,” Tony was telling Bucky -- officially Tony’s driver/bodyguard after the third successful kidnapping attempt, “from before. And it certainly blew the roof off the lab, but Rhodey didn’t get caught in it. Not like this.” They were sitting in the hospital waiting room. It was three in the morning and the only other person there was a drunk who was claiming he had chest pains because it kept him out of the cold. Tony wasn’t sure the drunk didn’t have chest pains, and might well be actually sick, but the triage nurse had kept the man waiting for over an hour now, which was not what triage was supposed to be.

Rhodey was still in surgery, but it would have been a lot worse if Bucky hadn’t been there and held up a section of collapsing ceiling structure while Tony dragged Rhodey’s body out of the building.

“You want an honest assessment, Tony?” Bucky asked him.

Tony blew his hair out of his face and stared at his filthy hands. There were small cuts all around his knuckles and his shoulder hurt like hell. Nothing that wouldn’t keep. “It’s my fault.” He didn’t know what would happen if Rhodey died in this fantasy land. He assumed nothing would happen to the _actual_ Rhodey, the one back in the real world, the one with the broken back, the one who had followed Tony into danger and had paid the price for it, a million times higher than Tony ever would.

That didn’t mean, however, that the Tony in this world wouldn’t suffer for it.

Tony couldn’t die, but that didn’t mean that the people around him would stay.

Nobody ever stayed.

“Your personality’s developin’ faster,” Bucky told him. “The man who suffered Afghanistan an’ Siberia. That’s who you are now, and relivin’ your childhood ain’t changed that. You ain’t a reckless kid playin’ around in a lab anymore, th’ one who’d run as soon as things started t’ go wrong. Rhodes is followin’ your lead.”

It was his fault; Tony’s memory of the original event -- they’d fled as soon as the fire started. The whole damn building had gone up. Howard had been livid. But also impressed, and the explosive power that Tony had developed there had been snatched up by Stark Industries and eventually -- Tony shuddered -- used to develop the Jericho missile.

Today, Tony’d managed to put out most of the fire, the explosion had been substantially more controlled.

At what cost? He couldn’t help but stare off toward the room where Rhodey was getting a ton of shrapnel removed from one leg. Seemed like the universe, any universe, thought that Rhodey would be better off not being able to walk.

“What do you suggest, then, oh brilliant one?” That was bitterly sarcastic, but really, Tony was hoping that Bucky had a suggestion.

“First, I suggest we both put effort into gettin’ your friend well again -- like we did with Peggy last year, when she got sick. We wished her better,” Bucky said. “Think highly effective surgery, think radical improvement from physical therapy.”

“The power of positive thinking?” Well, that certainly wasn’t Tony’s strong point, but he held on to hope like a _motherfucker_ , because sometimes hope was all he had. “And then what?”

“You’re almost an adult,” Bucky said. “Why not finish the Iron Man suit? Join SHIELD. You know as well as I do, you don’t need this education, you got everything you need up in your head already. You, me, Steve. We can start the Avengers. Look at it this way; you won’t have to deal with palladium poisoning to run your arc reactor. You won’t start out with public opinion learning about superheros at the battle of New York. We can get a jump on _everything_. We can be ready, before Loki even gets here.”

Tony almost said Why bother? It’s not like this universe was going to exist once Tony left it. But at the same time, there was some desperate need for a do-over. To be able to do it right, to not be bogged down by bad opinion. To know that they had a better chance.

To find the tesseract before SHIELD got a hold of it; with Hydra already in the crapper, Tony wondered if the twins would even exist at all, if Wanda and Pietro could be prevented from starting the events that lead to Ultron. Certainly, their reasoning was going to be different. Tony’d already put the kibosh on a lot of the illegal weapons sales.

And… come to think of it, the minimal explosion at the lab… would prevent a lot of deaths, in the long run, because Howard probably wasn’t going to jump on Tony’s invention and steal it out from under him for the purposes of weapons improvement.

Tony raised his head to stare at Bucky.

“That… that is fucking _fantastic_ idea,” Tony said. “Let’s do it. Let’s absolutely do it.”

***

“Why are you the same complete douche in every universe?” Tony demanded, pushing Steve out of his personal space. It was rather satisfying that the new suit -- the one he’d developed from a mix of Extremis and nanites and called Bleeding Edge -- gave him extra strength even when he was in a tee and jeans and Tony actually could shove Steve around.

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

Bucky laughed, the asshole, from the other side of the room. It was even more satisfying to have private jokes with Bucky, because very little pissed the Captain off more than realizing that somewhere along the line, his best friend had fallen in love with his biggest rival.

Tony guessed no matter what universe they were in, Steve was still just a stubborn little man trying to do what was right.

But right was so seldom a matter of black or white, and Steve kept wanting to divide the world into good guys and Death Eaters. Tony reminded himself to put Harry Potter on the movie night list. You know, when the damn thing actually got written.

“I’m telling you, she can be brought into the fold.”

“Tony, she killed a US Senator!”

“Yeah, well, Pierce was an asshole, trust me, we’re not missing anything.” Project Insight had been slowed and slowed again, but they still couldn’t find Zola -- even though Tony knew he had to be around somewhere -- and until that was accomplished, the worry would be in the back of Tony’s mind.

Bucky hid a broad grin behind his metal hand.

“You’re not helping, Bucky,” Steve snapped. “I know you think he’s perfect, but Howard says--”

“Oh, my god, will you just go ahead and marry my dad, become my stepmother or something, holy shit,” Tony retorted. Maria had walked out on Howard almost five years ago, and was much happier set up in a little Italian villa near some of her girlhood friends. Tony took the suit over to Europe a few weeks out of the year to vacation with her.

Weirdly enough, his parents were both still alive, and mostly functional, and Tony was rapidly closing on his twenty-fourth birthday. It was nice…

He and Howard had started getting along better once the Avengers were formed; and Tony had proved something obscure to his father.

Maybe it was just that Tony had finally become the ass-kicker and name-taker to rival Captain fucking America, and Howard didn’t feel like such a failure as a father.

“Look, we’ll bring her in,” Bucky said, interrupting whatever the hell umbrage Steve was going to take with Tony’s mouth. Again. “She’s been brainwashed.”

Steve flinched. Even with the terrible seventies tech that Hydra had been working with, Bucky’d been tortured for damn close to thirty years and Steve knew it, even if that realization hadn’t happened until after the fact. Way after the fact, really. Steve didn’t know about Bucky’s stint as a soviet agent until shortly after the Berlin wall came down and a lot of information got leaked.

“You really think you can bring in the Black Widow?”

Tony gave Steve a tight smile. “Bet you fifty dollars.”

***

It was really nice to collect that fifty, crisp and clean and starchy.

Tony had it framed and hung on the wall.

Bucky laughed every time he saw it.

Eventually, Natasha found it pretty damn funny, too, once her sense of humor had recovered.

***

Tony stared at the situation map. “I don’t understand,” he said, plaintive. “Ten Rings was just a bunch of terrorists. Not some mystical elite ruler with a bunch of magic rings.”

“We changed the map, Tony,” Bucky said, calm and soothing and for Tony’s ears only. “We took Hydra out early.”

“Nature abhors a vacuum?”

It was so nice, Tony thought, to have someone who understood. Someone who knew what the future had held before, and how this had been so much better.

It had been better, right up until the Mandarin hadn’t been some asshole playing a long-con, and had turned out to be a magical powerhouse. And that Nat had joined him. And brought half of Pymtech with her.

“What the hell happened with the Widow?”

Steve had been the first in the goddamn line to say “I told you so,” when Nat jumped ship and cut a huge hole in their defenses at the same time delivering particle-tech and a fleet of Yellow Jacket warriors to Ten Rings.

“Maybe we grabbed her too early,” Bucky suggested. “She hadn’t had time to get disillusioned with her life. Brainwashing isn’t always just about the drugs and the mind control. Sometimes it’s a need; you grow dependent on having someone else tell you what to do.”

“Or maybe it’s just me,” Tony said. “I was destined to be betrayed by someone I cared about.”

“It happens to everyone, Tony,” Bucky said. “People leave us, they outgrow us, they have different goals. Yours… just happen on a larger scale, baby. Because you’re out there, operating on a global scale.”

Tony sighed through his teeth. “I want a do-over with Strange’s little dream world,” he said. “I just want everything to go according to plan. Just once.”

“Eh, you’d be bored, lover,” Bucky said. “Come on, we can do this. We can change her mind. Double-crossing is part of her nature. We can bring her back to the fold.”

“You are the most ridiculously positive person I have ever met in my life.”

Bucky’s expression turned soft and loving and Tony’s stomach clenched up, knowing that Bucky was about to say something sincere and heart-rending and that Tony didn’t deserve. “Because I have you,” Bucky said.

Yeah, there it was.

“Love you, too, old man.”

“Not like you’re not just about th’ same age as me,” Bucky told him.

“It’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” Tony quipped.

“Yeah, gonna run up your mileage, if you don’t stop bein’ a brat.”

Tony cocked his head to one side, a smile creasing his mouth and a curl of heat wrapping around his spine. “Is that supposed to _discourage_ me?”

“Have I ever--”

“Come here, you,” Tony said, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s neck and pulling him in for a kiss. They were still kissing when Steve came in to report. And still kissing when Steve stormed out in disgust.

_Win fucking win._

***

The cost of beating back the Mandarin and Ten Rings had been high.

The death count was higher than the Ultron Incident and the Fall of SHIELD combined.

Tony rested his head against Bucky’s thigh and wept for the dead.

God, he loved Bucky.

He had no fucking idea how he’d lived so long without him.

***

When Dr. Strange arrived and requested a moment of Tony’s time, it wasn’t the oddly young, still-in-med-school asshole, but the one wearing the Cloak of Levitation and the Eye of Agamotto around his neck.

In other words, the real one.

Tony ushered him into one of the offices, feeling sick. He didn’t bring Strange into his own office, mind; didn’t think he could stand seeing Strange among Tony’s own things. Just a boring, meet-and-greet office. The Avenger’s mansion had three of them, in various sizes and degrees of comfortable, depending on who was there, and how the Avengers felt about them.

“It’s time to go, Stark,” Strange said and his voice was unusually grave.

“What, no? I’m not even thirty, I have a good ten more--”

“No, you don’t,” Strange said. “You’ve… done something remarkable, but also dangerous. Somehow you’ve invested this dream world with enough hope and love and determination that it’s becoming real. Another decade and we’d have a dimensional event. This would become… real.”

Tony swallowed, looked around. “Is that bad?”

Dr. Strange sighed. “It might be,” he said, at last. “We don’t know what the effects will be. All the dimensions that have been mapped thus far -- between the sorcerer's research and Reed’s discoveries -- have been millenia old. This would be a new dimension, a fresh rift. Earth 616-b, so to speak. The energy released from the sudden split could be catastrophic to both dimensions. We’re talking about spontaneous black holes and supernovas. Across not only this reality, but your home dimension as well.”

“Your little dream world could destroy an entire universe?” That seemed far-fetched.

“It _was_ mine,” Strange said. “You’ve made it your own. Your passions and fears and emotions and wants and needs have all shaped it. I’ve never seen such raw, natural power before. It makes me believe that you, my old, sadly mundane friend, might want to take up study of sorcery. Eventually.”

Tony scoffed. That’d be the day. “So, what do we do?”

“We leave,” Strange said. “Now.”

Tony’s chest ached, like he’d had the arc-reactor shoved back into it. Of course, this body had never been modified. This body had new scars from new injuries, but nothing like what he’d suffered in a cave in Afghanistan. “Now? I can’t… I can’t even say goodbye?”

“How would you explain it, where you were going?” Strange said, and his uncomfortable eyes were full of compassion. “This world will cease to exist as soon as we leave it. There will be no one to miss you, mourn you, or wish for closure. All you can do now is harm yourself. It’s a clean break.”

“I can’t… I can’t _leave_ ,” Tony said, aware that he was pleading, nearly begging.

“We have no choice,” Strange said, implacable. “Every moment we linger, with your emotions running so high, the danger of a dimension event grows. Come, take my hand, and let me take you home.”

Tony swallowed his tears.

How the hell was he going to go back to a world where Bucky Barnes hated him?

***

Tony couldn’t get away from Strange fast enough. He knew he’d have to go back, apologize or something. Someday.

Right now, though, he just wanted to get away from the Sanctuary, away from a reality that wasn’t his own. Try to come to some grips with the life he had now.

What was real, what had happened. What had never happened.

He caught a brief glimpse of himself in the mirror just before the door and nearly staggered to a halt.

He was so… young.

Somehow he’d expected to be back to his mid-forties, hair graying, wrinkles around his eyes, pain in his knee, the shaking left arm, the ache in his sternum where the arc-reactor used to be.

None of that…

He was… not even thirty.

How the fuck was he supposed to explain that to anyone.

He leaned in closer, looking at his eyes. The Tony in the mirror… looked like he slept regularly. That he ate more than whenever he fell down. That he’d been well rested, well loved, well taken care of.

“Jesus, what the _hell_ did you do to my life, Barnes?”

“I’m back to Barnes, now?” Bucky strode down the hall, looking for all the world like he’d been running. “You couldn’t wait for me?”

Tony blinked. “Why would--”

And then Bucky was there, in his arms, kissing him, hands twining into Tony’s hair, pulling him closer. Tony melted into it, he couldn’t help it, he was too damn used to Bucky in his life, in his bed. In his heart.

“I thought--”

“Did you think I’d forget? I mean, I know I don’t got th’ best track record for rememberin’ shit that’s important, but… Tony, that was _our life_.”

“You weren’t there.” Tony exploded into a flurry of motion, flailing his arms around wildly. “I dreamed you up, just like I dreamed up a Howard that liked me, and a Steve that I could boss around. _You weren’t real_.”

“Honey,” Bucky told him seriously, “I was the only damn thing in there that _was_ real. You, and me. Us together’s what fucked up Strange’s dream. I-- look, I asked him if I could go in, a few hours after you left. I just… I wanted some life, Tony. Wanted some of what I’d been cheated out of. An’... an’ you gave it to me.”

“Bucky--”

“Don’t tell me that’s over, just because we’re home, because god damn you, Tony Stark, _I love you_.” Bucky’s gray eyes filled up with tears and spilled, shameless, down his cheeks.

“Oh, _honey_ ,” Tony said, and he let himself fall back into Bucky’s embrace. “You’re the only thing I was going to miss, and the only thing I couldn’t figure out how to live without.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” Bucky said. “We just need t’ figure out what to tell people about your face.”

“What’s wrong with my face?” Tony leaned closer to the mirror. “I look great.”

“Yeah, that’s th’ problem,” Bucky said. “You look like a kid.”

Tony waved a hand around carelessly. “New youth treatment. Plastic surgery. I’m rich. People will believe anything. Maybe I’ll even get on that. Stark Beauty line. I’ll make millions.”

“You already have _billions_.”

“I’ll give it to you,” Tony said, tucking his arm around his boyfriend’s waist and directing them the hell out of the Sanctum. “Your pin money.”

“You’re such a sugar daddy,” Bucky said.

“Hey, you’re the one who’s old now,” Tony retorted.

They made the sidewalk and Tony glanced back to see Stephen Strange leaning against the door frame. He gave a perky little two fingered salute. “Good luck, Stark.”

“Don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t need luck,” Tony said to Bucky, earnestly. “I’ve got you.”

“You certainly do, kid,” Bucky said.

“Oh, no, old man, you don’t get to call me kid.”

Bickering cheerfully, they headed down the street. Eventually they’d think to call for a cab, they’d have to make arrangements for Bucky to be back in the States, they’d have to figure out what to do about the renegade Avengers in Wakanda.

But all that could wait.

Tony was going to take his beautiful miracle of a boyfriend somewhere private and have his wicked way with Bucky.

Bucky’s answering smirk told Tony that he was onboard with that plan.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, that's the end! Thanks for being patient with me while I worked through some issues, and finally got the whole story out.


End file.
